Wealth of the Islands

by Isobel Chace

  WEALTH OF THE ISLANDS

  Isobel Chace

  Helen Hastings had hardly been married when her husband Michael went out to the Pacific on a diving expedition and died there.

  Curiosity about his death, and the feeling that she ought to help finish his work, made Helen go out there herself and try to join the expedition. But Gregory de Vaux, who was in charge of it, had other ideas…

  CHAPTER ONE

  HELEN’S first sight of the Islands was from the aeroplane that had brought her from New Zealand, hopping from one group of islands to the next right across the Pacific Ocean. They spread out beneath her in the shape of a rather battered horseshoe with a long coral reef practically enclosing the open end. Through the gap, boats of varying sizes came and went, some of them transporting goods from one island to another, others setting out on the longer voyage to Fiji or Samoa, or even to the New Hebrides.

  “Pretty, ain’t it?” the pilot remarked laconically.

  Pretty was an understatement, Helen thought. The Islands were the most delicious shade of green, edged with silver-white sands and set in a very blue sea. Even from a height she could see the palm trees waving gently in the soft breeze, their heads nodding towards each other in a slow, stately dance.

  “I’m going down,” the pilot said suddenly. “You can see the landing strip jutting out into the sea over there. There wasn’t an island big enough in Melonga to take an airstrip. Before the war, you had to come by boat or not at all, but they made this soon enough when the Japs were coming.” He grinned, enjoying her reaction of dismay as she saw what he meant by airstrip. From the sky it looked more like a fragile jetty protruding out into a shallow green coloured bay.

  “Is it long enough?” she asked huskily.

  His grin grew broader. “I’ll set you down all right,” he promised.

  Even so, she shut her eyes tight as they swooped down towards the island and only opened them when she felt the wheels of the aircraft lurch on to a solid surface and knew that they were safely down.

  “Feel better?” the pilot asked unsympathetically.

  “More or less,” she agreed. And then she laughed. “Is there anything else on this island except the airstrip?” she wondered.

  “Not much.” He shrugged his shoulders. “The hotel is on the main island. There’ll be a boat along some time to take you there, I dare say.”

  “And what will you do?” As far as she could see there was nothing on the island at all except a collection of huts and a fringe of palm trees that were growing, tall and straggly, round the inland end of the strip.

  “I’ll be getting on.” He smiled across at her, his eyes unbelievably blue. “But I’ll be back to see you some time, don’t you worry about that! Shall I find you at the hotel?”

  Helen nodded doubtfully. “I’ll leave your my address there whatever I do,” she promised. She twisted the wedding-ring on her finger nervously. “That is,” she added, “if I stay at all.”

  “Oh, you’ll stay! They won’t let you get away!” he comforted her cheerfully. “A pretty girl like you can be sure of a welcome anywhere!”

  “Even with Gregory de Vaux?” she queried bitterly.

  “Can’t say I know the man personally,” the pilot said. “But I guess he’s human like the rest of us!”

  Helen smiled at him gratefully. “Did you know Michael?” she asked him next.

  “Who else do you suppose flew him out here?” the pilot retorted. “Look, if you’ll take a word of advice from me, you won’t worry so. You get yourself fixed up and I’ll fly your sister-in-law in to you next time I come. With the two of you together, you can hardly get into much trouble, can you?”

  Helen’s spirits recovered enough to enable her to giggle. “Heaven knows,” she said, “we’ve led a pretty respectable life this last year!”

  “Well, there you are then!” He pulled off his flying gear and opened the door in the main cabin of the plane for her to alight. “You’ll find the Customs in one of those sheds,” he told her. “They’ll see you right. ‘Bye now, Helen, it’s been a joy to have you on board!”

  She shook hands with him, thinking how odd it was that on this side of the world one never rated a surname. No one had called her Mrs. Hastings since she had arrived in New Zealand. It was Helen all the even from people she had never met before and never would again.

  “Good luck!” the pilot called after her as she clambered down the steps and began to walk across the strip of concrete towards the shacks on the other side.

  “Thanks,” she called back. “And thanks for flying me out!”

  He made a gesture in the air, signifying his approval. “It was great!” he assured her. “Made a change from the normal freight I bring here, I can tell you!”

  Helen hesitated, wondering if she should ask him to treat her sister-in-law gently. Poor Anita, who had never flown anywhere in her whole life. But she thought better of it, waved her hand in a friendly salute and turned her face towards the Islands and the formalities of arrival there.

  Michael Hastings had been a peculiarly handsome young man. The first time Helen had seen him she had been completely bowled over by his bright blue eyes, so curiously like the pilot’s She had just left, and his floppy fair hair that was always in his eyes. It had only been a matter of time before she had thought she was in love with him, and hardly any time after that she had been sure of it.

  They had met on a wild holiday scheme, organised by a group of students, that had gone diving off the coast of Ireland, hoping to find the wreck of one of the ships of the Spanish Armada, long rumoured to have come to grief somewhere in the vicinity. They hadn’t found much, but she and Michael had been far too busy discovering one another to care.

  “What brought you on such a holiday?” he had asked her.

  “I enjoy it,” she had answered. She had been too shy to tell him that diving had long been the major passion of her life. She was good at it too, and had spent most of her holidays helping out with one expedition or another. Because she was a teacher she had long holidays and she had made the most of them.

  “What are you doing here?” she had asked him in her turn.

  He had grinned at her. “Bird-spotting!” he had told her frankly.

  They had been inseparable after that. Sometimes Helen had been aware of an impatience within her when she had watched Michael dive with the others. She was a perfectionist about these things, she admitted that, but even so she hadn’t been able to approve of Michael’s exuberant technique, or of the risks he took. He in his turn had laughed at her safety precautions and had accused her of cowardice. “It’s forgivable in a woman,” he had added, “but it wouldn’t be in a man!” And for some reason neither of them had fully understood, they had collapsed into helpless laughter.

  A few weeks later they had been married. The service had been a terrifying ordeal, dominated for Helen by the presence of Michael’s mother, who was the most terrible and forbidding person she had ever met. In a way, Helen had thought afterwards, it hadn’t been her wedding at all. Mrs. Hastings, senior, had made that devastatingly clear. It had been Michael’s wedding, his mother had made quite sure of that. Even the guests had been greeted by Michael and his mother, with Michael’s sister, Anita, trailing along behind, her cheeks pale and her eyes anxious.

  That had been the cause of their first quarrel. It had been a rather one-sided quarrel, with her throwing all the hurtful words she could think of and Michael remaining maddeningly calm and forgiving. One grew used to Mother, had been his favourite slogan. Only Helen had never grown used to his mother and knew even then that she never would.

  And then three weeks later, while she had still been in the gorgeous golden glow of a thoroughly
successful honeymoon, Michael had broken the news to her that he was off to the other side of the world. He had decided to go diving in the Melonga Islands for gold.

  “It was my father’s ship, you know,” he had told her proudly. “He was sent by the Navy to pick up the Islands’ gold just before the Japanese swept across the Pacific in the last war. The ship ran against a hidden coral reef and sank without trace. But there’s a chap who’s going to get the gold out. He’s working for the Melongan Government. There’s an advertisement in today’s paper for divers. I’m going to apply.”

  At first Helen hadn’t objected very strenuously. She had looked up the Islands in an atlas and had found them at last, a sprinkling of dots lost amidst the bright blue of the Pacific.

  “When do we leave?” she had asked. “I can’t wait to dive in the Pacific. My father always said it was the best place in the world!”

  Michael had looked put out and quite sulky. “That’s the point,” he had said at last. “You don’t leave. You’re going to stay with Mother and Anita until I get back. I’ve arranged it all with Mother. She says there isn’t any point in paying rent for this place just for one, and I agree with her. I’m sorry, darling, but that’s the way it has to be! This chap doesn’t go for women mucking up the expedition anyway!”

  She had argued, of course. She had said some pretty bitter things which she knew she would regret for the rest of her life. But it had all been to no avail. She might just as well have saved her breath. Michael had gathered his gear together with a good humour that appeared not to even notice her objections to being left in such a fashion. Helen had never come across such tactics before, and long before he actually left, she had had to admit that she had lost the battle on all fronts. She had even been forced to agree that she would stay with his mother and Anita while he was away, though she knew that she would hate every minute of it—and so would her mother-in-law.

  For three months she had existed rather than lived in the strained atmosphere that the Hastings called family life. Then a telegram had come from Melonga, addressed simply to Mrs. Hastings. Her mother-in-law had opened it with an expressionless face. When she had read it, she had folded it carefully, and put it away in her pocket.

  “Michael is dead,” she had said to Helen, and then she had calmly and deliberately walked out of the room.

  “Welcome to Melonga!” The freshly painted sign was the only sign of life that Helen could see at the first of the shacks by the airstrip. She walked on past it towards the second, a newer building, that someone had taken the trouble to re-thatch recently.

  “Is anyone there?” she called out.

  “You off dat plane?” the reply came lazily. “Come in, now. Where’s you for? The hotel?”

  Helen crouched down to get in the door and blinked rapidly to accustom her eyes to the dark interior. A Polynesian man was sitting, cross-legged, on the floor. He rose slowly to his feet at the sight of her, a great smile breaking over his face.

  “How come you come here on the freight plane?” he asked her admiringly.

  “There didn’t seem to be any other way to come,” Helen answered dryly.

  “Oh, there is!” the man claimed. “There’s a boat every month and an American flight here now too. That’s because of the hotel. Have you seen an American hotel?” he asked with ill-concealed awe. “It’s the biggest building on the Islands. Mr. Harmon says, come the season, we’re going to be swamped by all the American visitors that will come to his hotel. He’s arranging transport just as fast as he can.”

  Helen looked bewildered. “I see,” she said. “And how do I get to this hotel?”

  “It’s on the main island.” The man nodded slowly. “First of all, I check your papers.” He laughed softly. “People landing here! I check freight all the time! This the first time I check a young lady!”

  Apparently he knew what to do, though. He stamped her passport with a neat symbol bearing the legend of Melonga Islands, and handed her documents back to her with a courtly bow.

  “Is someone coming to meet you?” he asked when he had finished.

  She shook her head. She was beginning to think that she would never get off this barren island. “How do you come and go?” she enquired.

  “Government boat,” he said. “But not allowed passengers. No trouble though. The Sweet Promise will come by soon. They’ll give you a lift across the water.”

  “When are they due?” Helen asked rather desperately.

  “Soon,” he answered soothingly. “They come by soon.”

  Helen was glad to leave the hut and go outside again. She looked anxiously at her watch and saw that it was already five o’clock in the evening. If this boat didn’t come soon, it would be dark. She didn’t much like the thought. It wasn’t that she was afraid of the dark, but who knew what kind of a boat the one that was coming might be? She could see vividly in her mind’s eye the fragile outrigger canoes that she knew most of the islanders used. How would she ever get her things on board such a thing? And she wasn’t suitably dressed for such an adventure. She took a rueful look at her neat, tight skirt, and the ruffed blouse she was wearing, fastened with a cameo brooch at the neck. It suited her rather austere features and the way she wore her hair in a frankly Edwardian style, but it would not suit clambering in and out of any but the most civilised kind of transport.

  The island she was on was not very large. In twenty minutes she had completely walked round its circumference. From one point, she had been able to see the whole chain of islands looping round the horseshoe-shaped lagoon. The main island was as big.as all the others put together, but she could only just make it out in the distance. The islands spread for several miles, the work of how many million little creatures who had died and left their coral skeletons behind them, until the islands had appeared after many million years, and the birds had clothed them with vegetation. It had all happened thousands of years before the advent of man, but he too had probably arrived more by a matter of chance than anything else. The Polynesians had been fantastic sailors in their past. They had set out across the incredible distances of the Pacific with no more than the stars to guide them, and: had populated the islands one by one, settling down on the different places they landed, and forgetting over the long generations their nautical past and the strength of purpose that had taken them so many, many thousands of miles.

  Helen scuffed her shoe in the white coral sand and watched the multitude of tiny crabs that covered the beach running for cover. She was so intent on what she was doing that she didn’t notice the Polynesian official running across the sand towards her.

  “The Sweet Promise is almost here,” he told her. “I’ve hailed them to pull in and collect you. It’s best that you go and stand at the end of the airstrip. The water is deep there and they can come in right alongside.”

  In fact it formed an almost perfect jetty. Helen stood there waiting for the boat to come in close, the gold of the sun catching her hair and giving a touch of its own glory to her skin. But she was unaware of this herself. She had only eyes for the sailing ship coming towards her, its red and white striped sails flapping idly in the evening stillness. She was an old boat, but in her time she had been a lady and her lines still bore witness to her nobler beginnings. Helen wondered what she was doing here now, and who owned such a boat and therefore the delight of slipping back and forth amongst the islands of the Pacific, subject to no one but their own needs.

  “You like her?” the Polynesian asked with a grin.

  “She’s perfect!” Helen breathed. “A coat of paint and some less mended sails and she’d be beautiful!”

  The Polynesian laughed. “The boss likes her the way she is!” he informed her. “The paint will have to wait until the end of his work here.”

  Helen was so intent on the boat that she couldn’t have cared less about her owner. Sheer, naked envy stirred within her. How she would loved to have owned a boat like that. How her father would have done before her! It was ideal
in every way—not so large as to need a whole crew to handle her, but big enough to be able to live on board and to use her as a base for diving, or for carrying a small amount of cargo, or even just to sail the oceans in a modicum of comfort.

  Sweet Promise was a name to conjure with, for she did indeed promise a hundred sweet adventures for anyone lucky enough to have the handling of her.

  Standing on the deck at the bows was a lean man in a filthy yachting cap.

  “I suppose you want to go to the main island?” he greeted her as soon as he came within earshot. “How much luggage have you?”

  “Not much,” she answered.

  The man hailed the Polynesian official and told him to throw her cases aboard on to the deck. “I’ll stow it away in a second,” he said lazily. “Do you think you can jump aboard?” he added to Helen, eyeing her straight skirt with a half-doubtful, half-mischievous look.

  “I can try,” she assured him.

  He grinned. “Don’t bother!” he said. “I’ll come ashore for you!”

  He was as good as his word. Sun-tanned bare feet landed with a thud beside her and his strong hands had grasped her under her elbows and had manhandled her aboard long before she had time to open her mouth to protest.

  “We can’t allow you to get your finery wet,” he laughed at her. “You’ll want to arrive at the hotel looking as fresh as you do right now. Am I wrong?”

  Helen didn’t answer him. She rubbed her elbows, trying not to feel foolish. The scrubbed decks of the boat swayed beneath her and she had to clutch on to the hand-rail to keep her balance. There was a smell of diesel oil mixed with salt and canvas that she remembered so well from other boats in other times.

  “Oh, you are lucky!” she exclaimed.

  His eyes met hers, sharp, with interest. “So you’ve been aboard boats before,” he said. “But not in these parts, I fancy?”

  Helen shook her head. “In Europe,” she said. “Mostly with my father,” she added. “I haven’t done much sailing of late.”